was not Carmel’s daughter. Despite the inconsistency, the producers left the scene in. Carmel's storylines included a brief relationship with a toyboy, Kelvin Carpenter (Paul Medford), and numerous family and career-based problems. In 1988, Carmel gained a new partner, a white man named Matthew Jackson, played by Steven Hartley. The characters were shown to marry in a register office in January 1989, beginning a domestic violence storyline. By March 1989, Matthew was beating Carmel. This was the first time that EastEnders had dealt with the issue of domestic violence. After several months of abuse, a "particularly violent" incident ended with Junior stabbing Matthew with a kitchen knife to protect his aunt. By July 1989, the marriage "was as good as dead". Jacob has commented, "It was a great part to play. People couldn’t understand how a professional woman can stay with someone who beats her. That shows the durability of the character." Jacob opted to leave the serial in 1989, and she has since commented that "They didn’t want me to leave, and made me a couple of offers to stay", but leaving seemed like the right thing to do at the time. On-screen Carmel's marriage collapsed, and the following month her father died, so she left Walford to tend to her grieving mother. She last appeared in August 1989. Reception Co-creator of EastEnders, Julia Smith, has been quoted as saying, "Our EastEnd setting was chosen for the diversity of its past — the strong culture it has and the multi-racial community that has developed." However, the way that EastEnders treated their black characters during the 1980s has been criticized. Stephen Bourne, author of Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television has commented that "[EastEnders'''] black characters have rarely been as interesting as their white counterparts, or been given storylines of any substance...Viewers were more likely to tune in to watch the antics of Dirty Den, his wife Angie and bad boy Nick Cotton, than [black characters like] the Carpenter family and Carmel." In Robert Clyde Allen's book, To be Continued--: Soap Operas Around the World, Christine Geraghty has added "none of the black families [in EastEnders] rivaled the Fowler/Beale [family's] position at the heart of the programme's structure, and black characters were pushed to the margins of the story-lines. Carmel and [her brother] Darren clearly had an extended family along the lines of